The Dialogue Debacle: Day 4

Don't say I didn't warn you. (4,104 / 1,000,000)

I leaned back in my office chair and craned back my head, staring at the ceiling. “What makes good dialogue?” I asked out loud, speaking to no one in particular.

“How am I supposed to know?” a voice replied, mere inches from my right ear.

I jerked forward abruptly in my seat, my solitude unexpectedly cut short. I banged my knee on the bottom of my desk. It hurt. After a moment spent recovering from the pain, I turned my head to address the source of the voice. There on my shoulder sat a man, no taller than three inches, wearing a black tailcoat and top hat, a hooked black cane resting on my shoulder to his side. He was eating a tiny red apple, the size of a green pea.

“Wow, you were really suddenly and clumsily introduced into this story, how did you get here?” I rubbed my eyes, suspiciously attempting to recall the type of mushroom I ate with dinner earlier this evening.

He took a last bite of his apple, and casually tossed the core over his shoulder. It sailed through the air for a few moments before blinking suddenly out of existence with a tiny “pop!”. As he chewed deliberately, he wiped his hands on a small white handkerchief, which he had produced from nowhere. Finished chewing, he wiped his mouth, stood, straightened the front of his jacket, and bowed with a flourish.

“I manifested myself here expressly to facilitate the other side of this dialogue,” he beamed up at me proudly.

I narrowed my eyes at him. “You brought yourself here to help me, but you don’t know how to help me?” I pointed accusingly in his direction.

His wide smile continued, unflinching, apparently unconcerned about my obviously suspicious line of questioning. “Precisely!” he noted in a satisfied tone.

After regarding him for a moment, I began to take in more details about him. He had a long black mustache, twirled up at the ends, and a single monoc-

“No, no, no!” The little man suddenly exclaimed, waving his arms wildly, interrupting my observations. “That’s too close to the Monopoly Man. Come on lad, have some bloody originality!” Had I not noticed his posh English accent until this point?

Recovering from his animated bout of indignation, he pushed his hat back into a more refined position on his head. “Allow me,” he gestured vaguely with his hands, his air of quiet dignity returned.

“First of all,” he began, adopting a schoolteacher’s tone. “First of all, I am pushing eight centimeters, thank you very much - quite tall amongst my people, I’ll have you know,” he gestured to himself with both hands, palms up.

As he continued to describe himself, I began to see that the characteristics he mentioned were indeed true. Or at least they became true after he decided them to be so.

“Second,” he continued, “I am clean-shaven. I am indeed wearing a tailcoat and top hat, but you missed my shiny black oxfords!” the tiniest hint of indignation returning to his voice.

The motion of his hands followed his words, supporting them with crisp gestures in the fashion of an experienced orator. Pointing first to his face with an open hand, sweeping down his body, and finishing with a dramatic sweep towards his quite shiny shoes.

“Third of all, and most importantly, this story is about your dialogue,” the last few words were each accompanied by a tiny dramatic stomp onto my shoulder. “We’ve strayed too far from the main purpose,” he finished with a satisfied sniff, nose in the air. He glanced sideways at me, his sly wide grin creeping back onto his face. “Now, what makes good dialogue, lad?” he asked smugly.

I groaned, leaning back in my chair again. The man walked along my shoulder towards my collarbone, so as not to slide off.

“You’re the kind of guy who helps by just asking my questions right back at me?” I added some air quotes with my fingers around ‘helps’, so he would know how I really felt. His impish grin continued unabated, and he spoke no words.

“Well,” I relented, leaning forward again, resting my elbows on my desk and my chin on my closed fists. “It should be realistic, I guess,” I continued, as I regarded the three inch - sorry, eight centimeter magic fancy man who was currently examining his fingernails. He didn’t look up, but his head bobbed slowly with a contemplative nod.

Sensing that I was on to something, I continued. “Yeah, it should be the way people really talk. I’ve read way too much dialogue where the characters say some crap like ‘The full moon’s glow pales in comparison to the beauty which shines forth from behind thine windows to thy soul!’”.

He slowly raised a single finger, his posture and confidence demanding the floor. “But lad, are there not scenarios in which a character would speak in such a way? Pray tell, hast thou not engrossed thyself in nary a historical fiction?” his voice raised in pitch and volume, assuming a dramatic Broadway timbre. I wasn’t sure that he used all of those Shakespeare words correctly, but I knew he knew that I wouldn’t know either way.

“While true for the most part, adhering to the language patterns of the target audience is probably the safest bet, no?” I countered, not willing to allow this shrimp man to get the better of every exchange.

“I take offense to that comparison,” he noted. “However, in this case, we can proceed with that assumption,” he added, almost under his breath. He started and suddenly checked his watch, and apparently didn’t like what he saw, because he shook his arm vigorously before holding his watch up to his ear, listening intently. I stooped down to get a better look at what was going on. He checked it again, and I managed to steal a closer glance. I saw the face was completely blank save for a single number, and the watch had only a single black hand. The hand was slightly past the number, which simply read “1000”.

“I’m late!” he exclaimed, before jumping in the air, tucking into a neat somersault, and diving with perfect form into my right ear. That was the last time I get mushrooms from the farmers market…